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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23486851">you're my number one</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/bokutoma/pseuds/bokutoma'>bokutoma</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Female My Unit | Byleth, Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, My Unit | Byleth Has Emotions, Recovery, Sad Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, Soft Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 08:48:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,309</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23486851</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/bokutoma/pseuds/bokutoma</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><i>healthier.</i> byleth and dimitri will recover together.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>156</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>you're my number one</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>this is a request for molly! thanks so much :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It rains during many of the most important moments of Dimitri's life. Perhaps that shouldn't hold as much meaning as it does, considering Faerghus's natural climate. Still, it's hard not to take the ceaseless beating of the heavens as anything other than intensely personal, especially when his life is such a mess.</p><p>Even he has had a hand in his own dissolution. He can recognize that now. He hopes that vindication is a consolation to Felix, despite everything that war and rebellion have stripped from him, but it doesn't take much reflection to know that isn't the case. He may not have blood siblings to mourn (though Glenn had carved a hole in his heart regardless), but he knows all too well what it's like to mourn a father.</p><p>All he can do now is be the man, the king, that Rodrigue had believed him to be, no matter how ceaselessly difficult the struggle might be.</p><p>Goddess, every day is a struggle. It feels like clawing his way up from a shallow grave, wet, shifting mud sticking under his fingernails as he scrabbles for air through the dust in his lungs.</p><p>Every time he thinks he's emerging, that he's grasped the air that he <em>knows</em> is there if only he could reach it, he gets the taste of rain instead, flooding his throat. It's cruelty, he's always thought.</p><p>But he has forgotten how to drink.</p><p>It's Byleth who risks getting her hands dirty, who finds him in a way that his friends, for all their effort, never had. Perhaps it's blind luck, or fate, or just idle curiosity that lets her find the core of him, lost as he is, but in his heart, that miraculous, still-beating core of him that is beginning to awaken once more, he cannot find it in himself to believe that it's anything other than one simple, wonderful fact.</p><p>They are made for each other, two halves of the same whole. There is nothing else that rings as true as that.</p><p>Who else has known him so totally and completely, has seen through the mask he put up and not tried to remove it? Instead, she has always been solidly dependable, and she did not run even when that illusion he once so carefully constructed fell away.</p><p>It is no one else's fault but his own that he's put up that barrier, and each day he thanks the Goddess he is not entirely sure he believes the shape of for the miracle that is her.</p><p>When Rodrigue had died, his last words had been for Dimitri. Felix should hate them both for that, and in some ways, Dimitri knows he does. Still, Felix has always been loyal to a fault, even if life has stripped its overt demonstration from him and replaces it with avoidance of his pretender-king.</p><p>Still, selfishly, he is glad for it. Rodrigue had been like a second father and a touchstone all in one, and though Dimitri will never forgive himself that senseless death, he will always be grateful for that final lesson.</p><p>Living for himself...that's not something he's attempted in a very long time. He'll do it, though, for a final nod to the corpses he has let possess him for so long. Even if his blood sings and his very skull seems to itch, he'll follow this last piece of advice for as long as he can.</p><p>After all, all he has to do is find a reason to live, and he has already long since discovered that in the form of Byleth. He'd just lost his way for a bit.</p><p>Either way, it rains during many of the most important moments of Dimitri's life, and the moment of his awakening is no different.</p><p>
  <em>None of us died for you. I'm dying for what I believe in, just as they did.</em>
</p><p>It's absolutely a lie, and one that Dimitri cannot bring himself to buy into, no matter how nice it would be to do so. He's done enough of that, and it's brought nothing but bloodshed and ruination to all the people he loves most. They have all died for what they believed in, his beloved buried, but what they'd believed in <em>was</em> him. The future of Faerghus, the future king.</p><p>He has not lived up to what they would have wanted from him, but that will change, if only because it must.</p><p>Still, on that rainy day, he had not yet grasped that, still content to hurt and be hurt. He had told Byleth that she couldn't understand what it was to hurt as he had been, she who had lost a father, too. She had shown him as much as she had told him about the other paths to take, and even through this, he had mocked her words (never her, but this had been the closest he could come), the most bitter of smiles stretching his mouth like hooks had been caught on his lips.</p><p>Even still, he'd known that she had the answers. There, in the pouring rain that had haunted his every valued memory, he had begged of her the way forward.</p><p><em>You must forgive yourself</em>, she had said, eyes so wide, so clear, so guileless that even his deadened heart had begun to beat again at her words. There had always been that claim over him, he supposes now, but at that time, it had been such a blessed, shocking relief to feel that he had almost forgotten his questioning.</p><p>And maybe, even after all this, what Byleth had said to him in that pouring rain hadn't been so fundamentally different from Rodrigue's dying words. They'd struck a chord in him either way, raw and burning in the numbed flesh that had passed for the core of him.</p><p><em>Live for what you believe in</em>.</p><p>More than anything else, what he has always believed in is her.</p><hr/><p>Byleth has lived through all sorts of climates, never seeing a season the same way twice. It comes with the territory of being a traveling mercenary, she supposes, and though she may not have yet known Brigid's brutal summers or the frigid winters of Sreng, then those gaps were supplemented by the intimate knowledge of many of Fódlan's most secret places.</p><p>Knowledge, of course, that had been granted to her by virtue of her father.</p><p>Goddess, she misses him every single day. Her former students think she does not know loss the way they do; Felix and Dimitri both forget that she had to watch her father bleed out in front of her, just as they did. Perhaps she can't fully comprehend what Sylvain has had to do, the complicated relationship he had with his brother, but she knows something of inevitability.</p><p>No matter what she had done, how far she tried to rewind, the knife had always found Jeralt's back.</p><p>As it is, she may not know the rain as intimately as Dimitri, but she knows what it can wash up just the same. She knows how tears can beat against the solid shutters of eyelids until they burst through, angry and unrepentant. She knows how they flood a closed-off room until there is no choice but to drown among the deep pools of grief. She <em>knows.</em></p><p>In many ways, Dimitri has been her rock just as he has claimed the some for her. In the time that she had been most battered and bruised, he had stood tall and proud, holding her Lions together with that sheer, inexorable will that he has possessed as long as she has known him. When he really, truly wants something, nothing will stand in his way.</p><p>It's beyond admirable, and somehow, he had seen a fraction of that in her as well.</p><p>Oh, how she had drowned after Jeralt's death, all frigid limbs and molten hot tears. She had not tried to fight it, either, angry and hurt as she had been, if not content, then all too willing to die there and follow after him.</p><p><em>Sorry</em> hadn't cut it.</p><p>She has never quite understood the revenge-driven mania that had gripped Dimitri until so recently, but she had thirsted for it in other ways.</p><p><em>Give me the word</em>, he had said, low and insistent when no others could hear them. That presence of his, the one that must have been given to him with the pedigree of a king, had distanced all others and had let her shed a tear or two before they filled her lungs. <em>Give me the word, and I will be your sword. We will avenge him. I am beside you.</em></p><p>More than anything, that anger had fueled her, given her something to think about, other than the rising tide of her grief. Dimitri had stoked a fire that she had all but forgotten about, tired and grief-stricken as she had been, and in that, she had found shelter from the ceaseless beating of her own internal storm.</p><p>Anger, as it turns out, can be a significantly better motivator than sadness.</p><p>Of course, that's only true when managed responsibly, and though she hadn't known him long at that time, she had still had enough insight into the dark corners of his mind that she might have known what had been happening inside his mind, might have stopped it.</p><p><em>You must forgive yourself</em>, she had said to him as he had tried to march past her, all the way to Enbarr. He had shaken like a leaf in a brutal storm, angry and hurt and so, so tired, but she had held firm. Dimitri did not need fire; that had always been his gift, one he had given to her so readily when she had been in need.</p><p>In turn, she had given him her own. The water of the rain that he had known so intimately yet still took for granted had washed over him in one giant tidal wave, massive and all-consuming. Among the raging infernos that had burned all sense from his mind, the cool reason of logic and forgiveness in equal measures had been as a balm to his furious fever.</p><p>In that downpour, Dimitri had sobbed, clinging to her hands as though they had been lifeboats, buoys crafted to guide him back to shore; she had let him because, in many ways, they had been.</p><p>In that downpour, she had cried too.</p><p><em>You must forgive yourself</em>, she had said, because that had been a lesson she'd needed to learn as well. In a way, he had taught it to her.</p><p><em>Live for what you believe in</em>. More than anything, what she believes in is her Lions, the ones that carried her through the darkest of times without asking for anything in return. More than anything, what she believes in are the people that have stood by her regardless of the oddities and idiosyncrasies she has displayed over the time they've known each other.</p><p>More than anything, what she believes in is Dimitri.</p><hr/><p>Mania is not an easy thing to recover from by any stretch of the imagination, and the weight of duty and responsibility does not make it any easier to bear. Dimitri knows this, and regardless, he remains frustrated by his own lack of progress.</p><p>"One step at a time, Dimitri," Byleth says, ever and always beside him, the barest ghost of a touch skating across his arm. Oh, that <em>she</em> was the only specter to haunt him. "You don't have to do this now."</p><p>"But you think I should." His gaze cuts to her as though it can't stand to be denied her for more than a breath, and in this, there is probably some measure of truth.</p><p>"I think you should <em>at some point</em>." He can read the exasperation in her tone, knowing he's stalling and urging him to make a decision. "It doesn't have to be right at this moment."</p><p>His next intake of breath is deeper, preparatory, and he braces himself for rejection as he knocks on the door.</p><p>"Come in, boar," snarls the all too familiar voice on the other side. "And professor, if that's you, come in as well."</p><p>Goddess, how embarrassing it is to be caught out. Still, he isn't about to ignore Felix just because he's feeling a little flustered. That would rather defeat the point of this whole endeavor.</p><p>This time, Byleth's hand is firm at his back as he twists the knob open. He tries not to sag into it too obviously, but he rather suspects he's only made himself more conspicuous this way.</p><p>Felix had clearly been sprawled on top of his bed until just a moment ago, his bedding rumpled if not quite out of place, but now he is leaning against his headboard, arms crossed and scowling. Honestly, this is probably a good sign. "What exactly did you come to bother me for? Not done terrorizing the Fraldarius family?"</p><p>Or not. Dimitri takes the words like a physical blow, stepping back until Byleth is at his back.</p><p>"Sorry," Felix says, and though this is probably in response to whatever look she's giving him from behind his back, Dimitri is surprised to note that he even sounds half-sincere. "Really, though. Why are you here?"</p><p>"I wanted to apologize to you."</p><p>"Oh? And how do I know that it's a person that's apologizing and not a half-crazed animal that's propped up by a well-meaning former teacher of mine?"</p><p>Dimitri winces again, but steels himself nonetheless. After all, everything Felix is saying is true; for all the faults he has, he never lies if he can help it. "I'm not certain I can prove it to you at this moment, but I intend to do so through my actions during the course of the rest of the war and beyond. I know words cannot erase the hurts I've caused, and though you may have been mocking me, there are few individuals I have done as great a disservice to as you. I do not expect your forgiveness, but I thought you deserved to hear this all the same."</p><p>Felix tilts his head further back, as though he's trying to peer into the very core of the man who might still be king and determine the truth of him. "I guess that didn't sound any more rehearsed than anything you've said before."</p><p>Byleth shifts beside him and Dimitri can tell that there's a distress to her, having her students fight like they're sparring with lethal weapons. Regardless, she keeps quiet - they aren't children anymore, naive and untested, and she knows the ways in which they cope almost as well as they themselves do.</p><p>He is grateful for this, he thinks, even if it hurts. This is a conversation he has been avoiding for years, and if there is more than a little vitriol thrown into the verity of Felix's words, then this is a healthier form of punishment than what he is used to.</p><p><em>Healthier</em>, Byleth had told him when she bestowed benedictions upon him like they didn't sting against his skin. <em>You don't have to be healthy yet, just healthier.</em></p><p>It helps, even when it doesn't. Then again, that's true of many things related to Byleth.</p><p>"As I said, I don't expect your forgiveness, now or ever. You just deserve to hear it from me, and though you deserved it earlier, I can only give it to you now."</p><p>"Obviously." Felix's eyes are suspiciously shiny, and it's only when Dimitri defers his gaze out of respect for this rare sight of vulnerability that sees the Fraldarius crest pin that lies on his bedside table. Rodrigue had never gone anywhere without it, and he wonders who it was that had had the stomach to search a stiffening body for the one memento that sings of him so strongly.</p><p>It might have been anyone. It should have been him.</p><p>"Boar." The way Felix says it isn't quite like a curse, but neither is it anywhere close to absolution. <em>Healthier.</em></p><p>Dimitri drags his eye up to meet Felix's, and there is all of the familiar anger there, simmering bright and hot beneath the surface. Underneath that, though, is something that looks suspiciously like understanding. "Yes?"</p><p>"I don't hate you."</p><p>From Felix, that is just as good as exoneration.</p><hr/><p>There is something about the quiet that appeals to both of them, exhausted as they are in both body and mind. There is something to the silence that does not judge, only cradles and caresses in its own way, reshaping that which has fallen in the dark, private moments where everything is noisy, if only because their own internal voices will not cease their incessant chattering.</p><p>At the very least, this is how it is for Dimitri, and he has learned to read the tension in Byleth's shoulders and recognize it as that which plagues him as well. They can be quiet together, no matter how counterintuitive that my feel.</p><p>It's good, to share the quiet with another. Just another thing he's forgotten.</p><p>They are curled in the library, in one of those few corners where all but the most studious had forgotten about even when they were all in school. There is togetherness, a sense of camaraderie to them even as they are clearly their own separate entities, each with a nest made of scrounged up blankets and cushions.</p><p>It stings, he thinks, to not be touching her. Nonetheless, he doesn't know how to ask if he even can. There is a stone in the center of his throat, and with each passing moment, it gets harder to breathe.</p><p>Even so, he likes the quiet.</p><p>They take this time together more days than not as they plot to retake Fhirdiad, time to curl into themselves and not be the people that they have to be when the doors of the war room close. <em>Healthier</em> has become his personal creed, and he is following it to the letter these days, tired though he might be.</p><p>He and Felix have reached an understanding of sorts, but that doesn't mean that the soon to be duke (and that's a thought that will earn its own spiral, in time) understands <em>him</em>. Some days, it feels like Byleth is the only one who does, even if there are others who try. Certainly, Mercedes would at least be a comfort, but that would require words, and right now, he <em>needs</em> the quiet that he hasn't had in years.</p><p><em>Healthier.</em> Each day, he gets healthier. One day, he will be healthy enough to find the peace that he craves in words as well, but for now, he needs this like an addict forced to withdraw. So instead of voicing what he so desperately wants, he settles for watching her, the smooth swell of muscle in her arms, jacket long folded into her makeshift pile. There is the scar where that <em>thing</em> that had claimed to be Tomas had glanced her with a Thoron spell, pale and stunted lightning, and the crease of her cheek where she had pressed it against the stone in an effort to get comfortable. Beneath any softness is steel and corded muscle, and he wonders how it is that she can remain so strong despite everything.</p><p>Even with one fewer eye and a larger blind spot, the intensity of his gaze hasn't changed a whit over the years, and though she still doesn't look at him, she stretches a hand out, one that he readily takes in his own. She squeezes once, a gentle reassurance, and he returns it in the best thank you he can manage.</p><p>Nonetheless, he is greedy, and he craves more with a fire that consumes him, burning raw and full, and there is no cutting out the longing that lives in his chest.</p><p>"Professor," he whispers, and still, the sound seems like the ricochet of a thousand lances cracking against thick armor.</p><p>"Byleth," she says in return, and that, at least, feels for better. "What can I do for you, Dimitri?"</p><p>Goddess, he loves the way his name sounds on her tongue, like it might be something soft, something worth saving. "Could you come closer? I find myself... feeling lonely."</p><p>And she doesn't scoff at him or tell him that she's right there. Not that he expected that, not from her, but there is a thrill of awe that goes through him at the idea that she is willing to entangle her pile of looted comfort with him.</p><p>When she lays her head on his chest, he thinks he might combust in the best way possible.</p><p>"Is that okay?" she asks, voice even softer now, and he loves her so painfully that it stings.</p><p>"It's perfect," he replies, and then they are quiet again, and he has the ridge of an axe scar beneath his hand. He doesn't like his - loathes what they have meant with a passion, in fact - but there before him is a testament to her strength both inside and out. If he lets himself dream of better things, he can almost picture a day where he might feel the same way about himself.</p><p>She is always in motion, though, and it's not long before the idle wander of her fingers catches on a deep gash that has not quite fully healed. He gasps before it can be covered up, and the full force of those too clear eyes bores into him, defenses rendered useless before they even had the chance to be utilized at all.</p><p>"Dimitri." There is little judgment there, but he cannot quite meet her eyes. "Where did this come from?"</p><p>"Not long before you returned to us," he confesses. "It's healing, I promise."</p><p>It's almost unfair, how well she knows him, though, because she reads that for the punishment it's meant to be, and it isn't long before he can feel the tug and tingle of faith magic knitting his skin together, scar blurring at the edges into something softer. "I wish you would stop punishing yourself."</p><p>There are many things he could say to that, things that would be easier if not entirely truthful, but he can be better than that. <em>Healthier.</em> This is just another part of that. "I'm trying," he confesses instead. "But it's hard."</p><p>Sympathy blooms in the divot where her mouth curls into a frown. "And it will get harder."</p><p>It's not what he expected her to say, but when does she ever meet his preconceived notions. "Then what do I do?"</p><p>"You speak." It sounds so easy when she says it, like it isn't life-alteringly difficult. "And if you can't, find me. I'm here for you, Dimitri."</p><p>He doesn't mean to be making grand declarations, not now, when everything is so dreadfully uncertain. There's something undeniable about her, though, something that cuts through reason and leaves him vulnerable in the best way possible, like he could show her every ugly inch of himself and get nothing but understanding in return. Each day is a miracle when the whole continent is at war and nowhere is safe, but there exists a voice that tells him it would be okay to trust her with anything, that she will always make it back here.</p><p>Ingrid had taken him flying once, long before all this endless bloodshed had begun. The wonder that is Byleth feels a little like the swooping feeling in his stomach had every time there was a significant change in altitude.</p><p>He is afraid, but there is only so much fear that he can hold anymore before it all comes spilling out.</p><p>"I love you," he says and braces himself for something he cannot name.</p><p>"Oh, Dimitri." Unbearable fondness is laced through her voice like embroidery thread, and he closes his eye because he cannot suffer the full shine of the sun. "There is nothing about you that I don't adore."</p><p>Who is he, in the face of this benediction? Tears gather as he blinks his eye back open, and if his lip is trembling, then he knows she will not blame him. "Even the ugly parts? I cannot expect you to tolerate the things I have done, the monster that I am and was."</p><p>"Then I will love him, too." Her hand comes up to cradle his face, even if it contorts the many-limbed creature they have become oddly. "But there is nothing about you that I find unsightly. We're getting healthier, aren't we, my darling?"</p><p><em>Healthier.</em> It hurts like nothing else he can name, but he loves the way <em>darling</em> sounds in her mouth, and he will do anything to keep it there. "I suppose we are."</p><p>She presses a soft kiss to the corner of his mouth, and he must be dying, because this is not something a living man deserves to experience, not with Byleth, who loves like a dissection, revealing all the inner workings of him.</p><p>She has always known him far too well.</p><p>"Do you think you would love me in another life?" The question weighs heavily on his tongue, but he can't bring himself to regret asking. Something like sorrow passes over her face, but he will not judge her for it; these are not words to be said lightly.</p><p>"In a thousand separate moments, I have always chosen you," she says, and if that's not quite an answer, it's close enough that it settles the anxious, stalking creature in his chest.</p><p>The kiss that he gives her then can barely be called such - the barest touch of lips, chaste as a nunnery - but his breath hitches and she gasps, and he has never been more in love.</p><p>"I have always chosen you back," he confesses, and her answering smile is the warmth of the sun dawning on a new day. For her, he can be better.</p><p>For her, he will.</p>
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